2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsMaking Blogging and RSS Pay Off Driving Traffic and Sales Through Optimized Blogs and Feeds 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsBlogs Blogs attract links Search engines, particularly Google, love blogs Blogs are search engine friendly out-of-the-box but not search engine optimal without some work 3 types of blogs, according to Seth Godin News blogs, Writers blogs, and Our blogs 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsRSS Better than the Inbox Unspammable content delivery channel to individuals Viable replacement for enewsletters Web-wide Syndication Propagate deep links that drive traffic and search engine juice You should be fired if you do a marketing site without an RSS feed. - Robert Scoble, Microsoft 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsSlashdot headlines syndicated on Nanodot.org 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts How subscribers follow RSS Web-based aggregator Bloglines (owned by Ask Jeeves), My Yahoo!, MyMSN, MyFeedster, etc. Installed application IE7, NetNewsWire, FeedReader, etc. RSS subscribers are connectors (Malcolm Gladwell terminology) 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts RSS What will help subscribers keep their finger on the pulse of your business/industry and compel webmasters to disseminate to their visitors? News alerts, latest specials, clearance items, upcoming events, new arrivals, new articles, new tools & resources, search results, a books revision history, top 10 best sellers, project management activities, forum/listserv posts, recently added downloads, For blogs: latest posts, latest posts by category, latest comments per post, 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsOptimizing Your Feeds Full text, not summaries 20 or MORE items (not just 10) Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post) Keyword-rich item Your brand name in the item Your most important keyword in the site container Compelling site Dont put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss) An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimizing Your Blog Rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure Tag clouds & tag pages (e.g. UltimateTagWarrior plugin) Related Posts (e.g. Contextual Related Posts plugin) Top 10 posts Next & Previous posts Build inbound links Add Technorati tags to your posts (must claim your blog first) Get onto bloggers blogrolls Trackbacks & comments wont help with link gain 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Tags point to Technorati tag pages Tags point to internal tag pages 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsA tag page 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimizing Your Blog Title tags Blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning Tag name should go in title on a tag page Customize with additional keywords for display only on your home page Override title tags w/ custom one (SEO Title Tag plugin) URLs Rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores 301 redirect from yourblog.com toMaintain legacy URLs even after switching blog platforms 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsSEO Title Tag plugin for WordPress Free & open source Allows you to override the title tag with a custom one on any post, static page, tag page, category page, etc. Can even define a custom title on ANY url Reverses the order of the blog name and the title, or drop the blog name altogether, or replace it with a shorter nickname Puts the tag in the title of (UltimateTagWarrior) tag pages Can use categorys description as the title on category pages Has a Mass Edit admin and an Options page to change settings Download at 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Great name for the blog! 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts Optimizing Your Blog Anchor text Make the posts title a link to the permalink page Use Neat-o tool (webuildpages.com/neat-o) to look for opportunities to request revisions to anchor text on inbound links Internally link back to old, relevant posts within the body of a blog post. Dont use here or previously etc. as the anchor text! Heading tags category name on category page Yes for post titles, no for dates! 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsPost title is anchor text. Permalink is yucky anchor text! 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsOptimizing Your Blog Sticky posts Always appear at the top of the page A way to add keyword-rich intro copy to a category page or tag page e.g. Adhesive plugin Author profile pages & author links (for group blogs) 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsSticky post 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsAuthor profile 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsOptimizing Your Blog Emphasis tags within posts (bold, strong, etc.) Rel=Nofollow All links in trackbacks, comments, and in posts where you dont vouch for the site Where the link would be reciprocal Pings Lets the feed search engines know youve updated pingomatic.com, pingoat.com, pings.ws, feedshot.com 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsBlog SEO Its childs play! My daughter, SEO-in-training 2007 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts #10 for neopet cheats within 2 weeks, and with only 1 link! 2007 Stephan M Spencer NetconceptsTaking It Further MarketingProfs.com Thought Leaders Summit on blogs for marketing 90 minutes with A-list bloggers Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Doc Searls, Steve Rubel, Debbie Weil, etc. me for a free copy of the executive summary, podcast, and transcript: Download this Powerpoint from http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/blogging-and-rss.ppt